> This raises the question, why are you storing the raw results
rather than
> storing the results after having been run through a TAP parser?
I am storing all test results, from all test runs, to drive a
tinderbox report with drill-down capability. I can (and do) post-
process the TAP output and strip the "^ok" lines to achieve part of
my goal.
...for a large product.
> Its important to know that a test ran.
Absoutely. Or perhaps to invert that, it's important to know when a
test did not run. Either way, there is no loss of information.
> Essentially, I'm unconvinced that this is A) a real performance
problem,
> running 10 million tests should swamp parsing 10 million TAP lines
and
> B) can't be solved with a more flexible TAP parser than Test::Harness
> such as Ovid's TAPx::Parser.
For me, it's not about speed, just about the inefficiency. Consider
representing N tests as
1..N
ok 1
ok 2
not ok 3
ok 4
...
ok N
-or-
1..N sparse
not ok 3
There is no loss of information, but there is a saving as N
approaches and exceeds 4. Less so with test names, diag output etc.
> One of the benefits of having a decent protocol is that you don't
> have to keep changing the protocol to do interesting things.
Agreed - stable protocols are important, and this is indeed a good
protocol. But does that rule out any future modifications? What if
the protocol could be improved (questionably) to consume fewer bits
without data loss, then there are some folks (one so far) who could
really benefit.
Paul
